Cultural studies is a discipline that started in England by the hand of Richard Hoggart during the fifties. Even if it mostly relies on almost the opposite view now (mainly because of theories developed around Bowling Green University in the United States), Hoggart "lament[ed] the loss of an authentic popular culture and [...] denounc[ed] the imposition of mass culture by the culture industries." (As we can read in his wiki entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hoggart). The previous decade Dwight MacDonald expressed the same ideas in his mag Politics (there's also the Frankfurt School, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno: http://tinyurl.com/oqxtqk). Rius follows these views, but he was a comics artist so, he has to see some good in comics too (ditto Umberto Eco, more or less around the same time). What he denounces are the violence and stupidity of some comics made in U.S.A. (superhero comics, mainly; in France he denounces the cheap use of sexploitation), the greediness of publishers and the stupidity of the audiences: "Mientras peor es la pelicula. Más larga es la cola..." (the worst the film is, the longer the line to attend it - my translation).

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About Me

I'm a Portuguese comics critic. I contributed to the magazines: Nemo, Quadrado, Satélite Internacional, Splaft! and the catalogs of the Porto, Lisbon, Amadora comics conventions (Portugal), The Comics Journal, The International Journal of Comic Art (U.S.A.), L'indispensable (France), European Comic Art (UK). I also wrote the preface to the latest edition of Guido Buzzelli's book I Labirinti (Italy). I co-curated a Buzzelli exhibition in Lisbon and an exhibition of my original art collection in the Beja Comics Convention (Portugal). I wrote twenty three entries in the book 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die (UK). In 2012 I was invited to the seminar Aesthetics of Contemporary Comics in Oslo (Norway).